Arctic Monkeys have topped Q magazine’s best albums of the year list with their latest release.
The band’s long-awaited sixth album, entitled Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, beat offerings from acts including Paul Weller and The 1975 to the top spot in Q’s annual roll of honour.
The list ranks the best 50 albums released in 2018.
Let’s Eat Grandma were second with I’m All Ears, The 1975 were third with A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, Robyn’s Honey was fourth and Wide Awaaaaake! by Parquet Courts was fifth.
Chris, the latest release from Christine and The Queens, was sixth and Joy As An Act Of Resistance from Idles was seventh. American star Janelle Monae made it to eighth place with Dirty Computer and Paul Weller’s True Meanings was ninth. The top 10 was rounded out by Anna Calvi’s Hunter.
Arctic Monkeys unveiled their album in May and it marked a complete reinvention of the band’s sound.
Frontman Alex Turner originally said he wasn’t sure if the new music he was writing was for the group or something else.
“Arctic Monkeys is something I keep reminding myself has been around for half my lifetime now, so it’s never really not there,” he told the magazine.
“But there was something in writing on a piano which made me consider the idea that it might not be a Monkeys thing. It wasn’t until the others hearing the stuff and encouraging it that it became this thing.”
Q editor Ted Kessler said: “There’s a lot of talk about ‘the will of the people’ being sacrosanct at the moment, but Q is a dictatorship and, so, having given the readers the vote for the Q Awards in October, we wrestled back control from them for the all-important writers’ end-of-year-vote and the order of the top two was reversed.
“This was very satisfying. Knowing that our readership’s taste is so close to those who write for us and that we all prize adventurous, tuneful melody most highly gives me heart for the onward journey through next year.
“All of the artists in the top 10, in fact, have attempted to make an album that subtly pushed themselves somewhere they haven’t been before, be it Paul Weller’s acoustic inner-visions on True Meanings, Christine and The Queens’ lavish feminist French funk or Arctic Monkeys’ winning baroque psychedelic-pop.
“The whole top 50 is a dream. It may have been cold outside in 2018, but these albums kept us warm all year.”
The full 50 albums of the year list appears in this month’s Special Review of 2018 issue, on sale on December 18.